


The Morpheus Maze

by ohthewhomanity



Series: And You'll Have A Place In It [6]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: AU in which Lena is a real person, Abandonment, Bugs & Insects, Child Abandonment, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Season/Series 02, after The 87-Cent Solution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-16 04:23:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20194645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohthewhomanity/pseuds/ohthewhomanity
Summary: When Scrooge McDuck accidentally brings adventure back home with him, he and Lena become trapped in a labyrinth of her greatest fears.





	The Morpheus Maze

**Author's Note:**

> Posted for Weblena Week 2019 Day 7: Free Day! Special thanks go to Soup for bringing Weblena Week back and giving me the kick in the butt necessary to get this story out before Ducktales canon debunks even more of this AU. Seriously, this has been sitting half-finished on my computer for months.
> 
> If you care about chronology – which you really don’t have to – take a look at the “87-Cent Solution” chapter of “And You, And You, And You Were There” (part 5 of this series) before reading this fic.

Normally, when the local adventuring crew returned to McDuck Manor, their arrival in the foyer was heralded by triumphant shouts, excited laughter, and other such celebratory exclamations leftover from a successful journey.

On this afternoon, though, the mood was the polar opposite.

Lena looked up from her phone as Scrooge stomped through the foyer, something black and roughly football-sized tucked under his arm as he glared his way into the house. Behind him, Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Webby entered, looking less angry but equally bedraggled.

Webby waved at Lena as they passed by, but kept walking, the kids all following Scrooge into his study like (if you’ll pardon the expression) ducks in a row. Beakley emerged from a nearby hall to follow them, vacuum in hand to clear away the dirt they were all tracking onto the carpet.

Curious, but in an appropriate sort of casual-teenager-who’s-too-cool-for-this way, Lena pocketed her phone and joined the party, catching the end of a rant as she poked her head through the doorway.

“...so Glomgold runs off with what remains of the Morpheus Medallion after he _blew up _the blasted thing, and _I _get stuck with the _booby prize._” Scrooge waved derisively at the charred, cracked-up urn on his desk.

“It might still have historical value,” Webby suggested.

“Or monetary, if you pass it off as a one-of-a-kind antique, despite its extreme oxidation…” Louie was inspecting the urn, his loupe squeezed between his eyelids.

“And hey, now we know that Morpheus actually existed.” Huey held up the JWG, tapping the cover. “Already added him to the guidebook, science fact.”

“And we faced impossible odds and came out from the adventure even closer as a family, right?” said Dewey.

But Scrooge was too preoccupied to pay the kids’ reassurances any mind.

“He’s trying too hard,” he grumbled, pacing around the desk. “Thinking he’s going to best me now, pulling out all the stops for that stupid wager…”

One of Beakley’s eyebrows rose sharply. “Wager? This doesn’t have anything to do with that ‘gold fever’ incident, now does it?”

“I’ve got it all under control, Bentina.” Scrooge pulled a heavy book off a nearby shelf and flipped through it, not really paying attention to whatever he was ostensibly looking up in it.

“What a waste of time!” he finally snarled, slamming the book down onto the desk next to the urn, causing a _bang _that made everyone jump – except Lena, who instead went tense, and then abruptly turned and walked out of the room.

But only Webby noticed that. And a few moments later, she followed.

* * *

“Lena?”

She wasn’t anywhere to be seen in the hallway, and it wasn’t likely that she’d gotten to the stairs that quickly; Webby would have heard her running if so. So Webby stood still for a moment, listening, until out of the silence she picked out a muffled sound, repeated at irregular intervals – gasps of breath, on the other side of a wall.

Webby tracked the sound to a closet, which she knocked on twice before cracking the door open and quickly sliding in, closing it behind her.

“I’m here,” she said, and those two words felt useless and obvious, but they were the first things to pop into her head to say as she crouched down in the darkness between a bucket and a mop. Lena had wedged herself under a low shelf, curled in a near-fetal position as her entire body shook with her gasps.

“I – Don’t – Darn it. Webs –”

“It’s okay,” Webby said quickly. “I mean, I know it feels like it isn’t, but, just breathe, okay? No need to talk, just breathe. I’ll do it too. Won’t even talk, not a word, no talking, just breathing. Easy, right? Not talking.”

Lena made a sound that was probably laughter, somewhere in between the gasps, and Webby had to shake her own head at herself.

“Right. Talking done, just breathing now. In, and out.”

And gradually, as impossible as it might seem from inside of a panic attack, Lena’s breathing slowed, and her muscles relaxed, and the moment passed, as it always did, until all was silent in the dark little closet.

“I thought I could make it to the stairs, at least,” Lena finally muttered. “Sorry you had to see that.”

Webby shrugged. “It’s okay, it’s not like it’s the first time.”

“Still.”

“I don’t mind, really.”

Lena rolled her eyes. “_Still._”

Webby shifted a little in the darkness, and the mop tipped over to lean against the bucket.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” she asked. “Some water? A blanket?”

“No.”

“Is there anything I can do, at all? To help?”

“Besides just sitting there while I choke on my own lungs? Not that I know of.”

“How about this: the next time your aunt shows up, I’ll kill her for you.”

She said it so casually it was impossible for Lena to tell if she was joking, especially since Webby had come closer to killing Magica de Spell than anyone likely ever had, when they fought in the Money Bin.

Lena smiled all the same. “Thanks, Pink. But a lot of this –” she gestured at herself in a general sort of way “– goes back farther than Aunt Magica.”

“You should tell Uncle Scrooge,” Webby said. “I’m sure he’d be more careful, if he knew –”

Lena scoffed. “It’s not his job to keep track of all the things that might set me off. Who the heck has time for that?”

“It’s worth putting time into.”

“Mr. McDuck has more than enough on his mind without adding my problems to the list. Trust me, he doesn’t care.”

Webby sighed. It wasn’t the first time they’d disagreed about this, and she had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last. So instead she hopped from one disagreement to another.

“You know, you really could call him Uncle Scrooge, if you wanted,” she said. “You’ve been part of the family for a while now.”

“Yeah, no, that’s not gonna happen.” Lena wiped her eyes on her sleeve and frowned at the makeup stain she left there. “As much as I love your optimism, I am nowhere near interested in calling him my uncle, and he’s made it very clear how little he’s interested in considering me his niece.”

“But you still call your –” Webby bit her own tongue to stop the rest of the sentence from falling out. “Ow. Never mind. Do you want me to cover for you?”

“Sure, thanks. Can’t have the boys knowing that this stuff comes off,” Lena joked, poking at the dark streak on her sleeve.

Webby checked that the coast was clear before the two girls emerged from the closet, and there they parted ways. Webby returned to the study, while Lena headed for the stairs, taking whatever answer she might have for Webby’s unspoken question about why she refused to call Scrooge “Uncle” but still called Magica “Aunt” with her.

* * *

Though Webby was ready to make Lena’s excuses (or attempt to – subtlety was not her strong suit), no one seemed to have noticed that she’d stepped out at all. They were all where they had been when Webby had left them – Scrooge grumbling, Huey and Dewey listening, Beakley trying to protect the carpet from stains, and Louie inspecting the urn.

And though Louie was closely examining this artifact, he at first didn’t notice the creature, because its skin was just as black as the urn. But then the movement caught his eye, and Louie realized that something had come crawling out of the top. It was a small but long creature, segmented like a centipede and slimy like a worm, with too-many scuttling legs and a long, sharp pair of needle-like fangs extending from its eyeless head.

Louie took several steps away from the desk. “Uh, guys? What the heck is that? I mean, what the heck are _those?!?_” he elaborated as several more of the wriggling creatures pushed their way out from under the lid and scuttled across the desk and to the floor, racing in all directions.

One rushed straight up the wall next to Webby. Her eyes widened. “Are those –?”

“Dream larvae,” Scrooge snarled. “Morpheus’s cruelest creation. Whatever you do, do _not_ let them bite you!” he added in a raised voice. “They’ll feed off your fear like leeches, trapping you in a labyrinth made of your own worst nightmares!”

Beakley turned up the vacuum. “Not in my house.”

The gang sprang into action to capture the escaped larvae, scampering all around the room. Webby grabbed a book from a nearby shelf and trapped the larva nearest to her between its pages. Huey and Louie managed to herd a pair of them towards each other, and then towards Dewey, who grabbed the urn and deftly scooped them up into it. Beakley caught most of the larva by far, dumping the vacuum bag’s contents into the urn.

“Is that all of them?” Dewey said as Webby dropped one last squirming larva into the urn and slammed the lid shut on it.

“No!” Huey was on top of a bookshelf, peering into a metal grate. “I saw one wriggle into the air vents!”

“And others might have gotten out the same way.” Scrooge shook his head. “This is one infestation an exterminator won’t help.”

Webby froze. “Wait. Where’s Lena?”

* * *

Lena reached out with closed eyes to grab a dry towel, using it to wipe off her freshly washed face.

As she lowered the towel again, blinking a bit under the bathroom lights, she noticed a dark shape reflected in the mirror. Something on the wall behind her, by the vent.

It moved. Scuttled.

Lena whirled around. That was a heck of a huge bug. Creepy-crawlies didn’t bother her normally, but she really didn’t like the look of those pincers. Or the way that it seemed to be watching her, even though it had no eyes. It was like it was waiting for her to make the first move.

She grabbed a nearby toilet plunger, and at the same instant, the larva leapt straight outwards from the wall with shocking speed. Lena just managed to knock it away with the plunger – hardly a home run, but enough to send it rolling under a shelf. Lena took the chance to yank the bathroom door open and flee down the hall. Were there more of these things? What were they? Were they dangerous?

People were shouting her name from the floor below her. At the end of the hall, she saw Scrooge emerge around the corner at a run. She took a step towards him –

– and then something dropped from the ceiling to land on her shoulder, and something thin and sharp stuck itself in the back of her neck.

* * *

“Curse me kilts…”

Scrooge gently lowered Lena to the floor. She was sound asleep already, her breathing sluggish. And there it was, the guilty beastie, its fangs happily lodged in her skin.

Many quick footsteps heralded the kids’ and Beakley’s arrival. Webby came running right up to kneel next to him, one hand grabbing Lena’s arm and the other touching her cheek.

“Lena?! Lena, wake up!”

“It’s no use, lass,” said Scrooge. “She can’t hear anything except whatever twisted terrors that thing’s putting her through.”

“We have to save her!” said Webby. “There’s got to be something we can do – get it off of her!”

She reached for the larva. Scrooge swatted her hand away.

“Careful! Those fangs are dangerously close to her brainstem. You accidentally break one of them off, and she’ll never wake up.”

Webby bit her lip and nodded, tearing up a little as she put both of her hands around Lena’s hand and tucked it into her lap.

Scrooge slowly put his thumb and pointer finger on either side of the larva’s head, and even more slowly pulled it away from Lena’s neck. The larva twitched a little but otherwise did not resist as its two long teeth slid out from Lena’s skin, leaving two little red marks behind.

With his other hand, Scrooge tapped Lena’s shoulder several times. “Come on, Lena,” he said. “Find your way back out to us.”

The boys and Beakley leaned in to look, but Lena remained still and silent on the floor.

“I thought this might happen,” said Scrooge. “It’s created a psychic connection more than a physical one. When a dream larva creates a maze of nightmares, it doesn’t make it easy to find the door. Someone’s going to have to go in and find her.”

“Wait, what?” said Louie.

“You mean go into her dream?” said Dewey.

“How?” said Huey.

“The same way that she did.” Scrooge held up the sated larva, keeping a tight grip on its neck. “A bite from the same larva should do the trick. It’s latched onto _her_ fears, after all.”

“I’ll do it,” said Webby.

“Absolutely not!” Beakley snapped.

“I have lots of experience helping Lena with her nightmares!” Webby bit right back.

“Your grandmother is right,” Scrooge said. “It’s too hazardous. I’ll do it.”

Webby frowned. “But –”

“I need you out here, Webbigail,” said Scrooge. “You know every nook and cranny of this mansion better than anyone, possibly even better than me. Take the boys with you and make sure you hunt down every last one of these infernal larvae.”

For a moment Webby looked like she might argue again. Instead, she nodded, gave Lena’s hand one last squeeze, and stood.

“Let’s go, guys,” she said, and then the four of them ran down the hall.

Scrooge positioned himself sitting upright against the wall, hoping that it would keep him from falling into too undignified a position as he slept.

“Beakley?” he said. “Keep an eye on us.”

“Always.”

Scrooge put his hand between the dream larva’s teeth.

* * *

It occurred to Scrooge, perhaps too late, that he didn’t know anything about Lena’s fears, and so he had absolutely no idea what he was going up against. But she was just a teenager, and he had been exploring, confronting, and defeating the most formidable obstacles and dastardly opponents for well over a century, so what fears could she have that he couldn’t handle?

All the same, he had every intention of finding Lena and getting them both back to the waking world as quickly as possible.

Scrooge turned his head from side to side, taking in his surroundings. He seemed to be standing on an endless purple plain. The ground was soft under his feet, a plush surface. And there were some odd shapes around him, brightly-colored balls and wooden cubes. Like children’s toys, except that they were all disproportionately large. Or perhaps he was disproportionately small.

He reached out towards one of the blocks. As he did so, the block began to glow with a pink halo, and it lifted into the air. Scrooge watched it rise, his arm still outstretched. He felt like laughing, strangely, as though the levitation of the cube was the most fascinating thing he had ever seen.

And then there was a sound like thunder, and something huge came rushing down out of the sky, smacking him across the face. Scrooge stumbled, and the block fell, clattering against a ground that was no longer soft.

“You stop that!” a deafening voice from above followed the blow, shaking the world. “Stop it now! Do you want to end up like your Aunt Magica? Well, do you?!”

The huge thing came down again, and this time Scrooge saw it: a hand, larger than his head. He ducked away –

– only to nearly run into someone, a man. Scrooge’s face barely came up to his waist. Sinister eyes glared down out of a face otherwise obscured by shadow.

“Now I know why they gave you up,” said the man. “You little freak!”

A hand grabbed Scrooge’s shoulder, firmly turning him around to face another towering figure, this time a woman.

“You watch your tone!” she snapped. “You will refer to us as ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am,’ is that understood?”

“It seems to me you don’t deserve the title,” Scrooge said, shaking her hands away. “Enough of this. What have you done with Lena?”

The woman just scowled. “We took you into our home, and this is how you thank us? Ungrateful beast!”

Clearly there would be no reasoning with her, or anyone here. This was Lena’s dream, and he was cast in her role, so no one would respond to him as he actually was. He had to find Lena, fast.

But everywhere Scrooge turned, there was another person, another pair of eyes glaring down at him, another snarl or shout.

“Just wait til Father gets home, he’ll show you –”

“– and you’re not coming back in until you’ve learned some manners!”

“Shut up! Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!”

“I’ll be right back, I promise...”

“You do realize you’re not actually my daughter, right?”

“Go upstairs and pack your bags. Now!”

“I’m so sorry, honey, it’s just not working out –”

“If I ever catch you in here again –!”

“Look what you’ve done, you monster!”

“Lena!” Scrooge tried to be heard over the clamor. Just how many past homes had Lena had before she’d ended up in Magica’s grasp? “Lena! Where are you?”

But there was no response, and the mob was closing in around him, now attacking with more than just words. Something smashed near his ear. Something slammed down in front of him with a loud _bang. _A hand grabbed at his arm, tight enough to bruise. Another set of thick fingers closed around his neck from behind.

“You think you’re so smart –”

“I’ll teach you to steal from me –”

“I will have respect in my house, do you hear me?!”

“If you ever try to sneak out again –”

“You’re mine! Do you hear me?! Mine!”

“No she isn’t!” Scrooge exclaimed. “She’s mine now – you don’t have any place in her life anymore! You don’t have any claim to her! So _back off!_”

Silence. The crowd backed slowly away from him, their shouting suddenly ceased, though those sinister eyes still followed Scrooge’s every movement as he looked around and straightened his hat.

And there – on the other side of the mob – there was a wall, and a closed door. A way out.

Scrooge took a step towards the door, and the crowd of past guardians parted to let him pass. He smirked.

“So that’s how it is, eh?” he said. “Reason through the fear, and you move on through the maze. And since Lena isn’t here, I bet that means she figured out how to get past you, too. Clever lass!”

He strode confidently up to the door and placed a hand on the doorknob. But there he hesitated.

Lena wasn’t here, that was true. But nor had she woken up. Which meant that somewhere, on the other side of this door, was something frightening enough that she couldn’t think her way out of it.

But he was Scrooge McDuck. The greatest adventurer in the world. He could handle it.

And so he opened the door and stepped right through.

* * *

Webby dropped down from the vent, letting the grill swing shut behind her. “That one’s clear. On to the next room.”

The boys nodded, and the four moved onward, flashlights and phone lights in hand, keeping their backs to each other so no angle of the hallway went unseen. No larvae were going to sneak up on this quartet.

In the next room, a guest bedroom of mid-level fanciness, they spread out to check the nooks and crannies.

“The sooner we check them all, the sooner we can get back to Lena and Uncle Scrooge,” said Webby.

“They’re probably awake again by now,” Dewey said. “He’s Scrooge McDuck, after all – and no nightmare of Lena’s like… like...” He paused. “What _are _Lena’s nightmares about, anyway?”

Webby just shrugged, checking under the covers of the bed.

“You said you have lots of experience helping her with her nightmares,” Dewey prompted. “She’s still sleeping in your room a lot, right?”

“She doesn’t really ever sleep all the way through the night.” Webby tucked the covers back into place. “I don’t mind, I mean, I’m used to it.”

“Has she ever told you what she was dreaming about?” Huey asked.

Webby shook her head.

“You’ve never asked?” said Dewey.

“Of course I’ve asked,” said Webby. “When I forget to bite my tongue, I ask. She doesn’t want me to know.”

“I don’t think _I_ want to know,” said Louie. “I mean, this is Lena we’re talking about. The girl who thinks a fun night out involves crashing a mob boss’s birthday party and chasing down monsters in the sewers. Whatever she’s afraid of? It’s gotta be really scary.”

“Can we please just go squash some evil bugs and stop talking about this?!” Webby snapped, and the boys all obediently fell silent.

* * *

He couldn’t move. He could barely breathe – his lungs felt flat, stretched, two-dimensional. And so did the rest of him; there was the world above, blurry and bright and out of reach, and he was a part of the floor.

His gaze was pulled downwards, away from the light. There was a deep darkness beneath him, and he was right on the edge of it, nearly a part of it, whatever it was. He felt a strong drive to get away from that darkness, and he focused all his strength into pushing upwards from the ground.

But he couldn’t push away.

And then they began to pull him down.

Who or what “they” were, it was difficult to tell. He couldn’t really see them, not as separate beings from the total darkness below, but he felt them there. He felt their hands all over him, not solid flesh, but something less corporeal. They grabbed his arms, his legs, his head, every inch of him that was in reach, and he struggled against their impossible grasp, but there really wasn’t enough of him left to fight back, he wasn’t solid enough to keep a grip on the ground as they sought to drag him beneath it.

Someone was laughing, high above him. A hauntingly familiar cackle of a laugh. And the beings behind the hands were laughing, too, a terrible, hissing laugh. As they laughed, they spoke, in a voice more felt than heard – _join us, _they said, _come down with us, you belong with us, you’re one of us, you’re nothing, just like us, just like us…_

“No I’m not!” Scrooge exclaimed. “I’m not – and she’s not, either! Lena is not a shadow!”

And suddenly, it was true. He was solid, three-dimensional, and lying on the ground in an empty room. The grasping hands were gone, as was the laughter. On a wall near his feet, there was a door.

This time he had to take a few moments to catch his breath before moving on. That deep, dark place, those grasping incorporeal hands – that must have been the Shadow Realm. The grim dimension Magica de Spell dabbled in, a negative space of secrets and sorrow. Even when Magica had been at the height of her power, Scrooge never had reason to set foot there. He much preferred himself in three dimensions. The netherworld inside his dime, in which she had trapped him during the Shadow War, had been bad enough.

Had Lena been to the Shadow Realm?

From the back of his memory, he heard Magica taunting Webby: _Lena couldn’t be your friend, because she was never real! You had sleepovers with a shadow!_

A lie, of course. Lena had been a shadow at that moment, yes, but she had transformed back into a girl immediately after Magica’s powers were dispelled.

But then there was the cry that haunted Scrooge’s own nightmares more often than he would ever admit:

_No! Not again! Don’t send me back!_

“It won’t happen again,” he said aloud, just in case anyone was listening. But as far as he could tell, there was no one there to hear; Lena wasn’t in this part of the maze, either. She had faced this fear, figured it out, and moved on.

He stood, brushed himself off, and opened the door.

* * *

Bentina Beakley and Scrooge McDuck had known each other for a long time, and they had spent a lot of that time saving each other’s lives. She, of course, had saved him on more occasions than he had saved her, not that they were _officially _keeping score.

Consequently, this scene of standing protectively over her employer and friend was a familiar one to Beakley.

Slightly less familiar was standing over Lena as well, though protecting this teenager was quickly becoming a natural part of Beakley’s life.

_Quickly, but not quickly enough, _she critiqued herself. In hindsight, Lena had shown so many signs of her struggles during those first few months leading up to the Shadow War. The way she dodged any question about her home life; her reluctance to remain at the mansion in daylight hours; her nervousness around adults, concealed by an anti-authoritarian attitude but noticeable nonetheless… But in the moment, through all those times that Lena had been here in the mansion, under Beakley’s supervision, Beakley had never once thought that the girl was in real trouble.

And here Lena was, in trouble again.

Beakley had to admit – to herself, silently – that her track record on protecting Lena was sub-par.

She resolved, there and then, to do better.

* * *

The room on the other side of the door was so familiar that Scrooge almost thought that he had woken up. He was standing in the middle of his own foyer, just inside the front door of McDuck Manor. This room was the scene of so many triumphant returns, bearing treasure and tales of victory – on his own, for a long time, and then alongside Donald and Della, and now with the kids in tow.

Scrooge looked up towards the staircase, half-expecting to see another new but increasingly common part of this scene: Lena, leaning against the banister. Her expression never betrayed any concern about their well-being or joy at their return. All the same, she was nearly always right there for Webby to run up and hug.

But it wasn’t Lena standing there, now.

It was himself.

The Scrooge on the stairs glared down at him with a well-practiced scowl. Despite himself, the real Scrooge froze for a moment. He was not used to being on the receiving end of that look.

“You have a lot of nerve coming back here,” said the Scrooge on the stairs.

“The fact that this is a dream aside, this is my house, and I’ll come and go as I please,” Scrooge retorted. “Though I suppose you think I’m Lena.”

“What, did you think that we’d welcome you back?” the dream-Scrooge said. “After all that you’ve done? Knowing what you are?”

“He never trusted you, you know,” another voice chimed in. Louie was standing in the doorway to the living room, his brothers close behind him. All three looked nearly as angry as they had on the Sunchaser when the truth had come out about the Spear of Selene.

“He’s too smart to,” Louie continued. “But we’re all on the same page, now. About you.”

“Did you really think we wouldn’t see through you?” Huey added. “You thought we’d what, welcome you into our family?”

“Our family is amazing,” said Dewey. “You could never be a part of that.”

“Stop it.” Scrooge took a step towards them. “None of this is real. Now, is Lena here, or isn’t she?”

“I told you,” said another voice, and there was Beakley on the other side of the foyer, Webby standing next to her.

“I know a bad influence when I see one,” Beakley continued. “I was right to judge you, and you know it.”

Webby didn’t say anything. She just gave him a cold stare, devoid of all its usual affection, and then turned her back. And somehow that was worse than any of the words that the others threw at him.

“You didn’t really think that Webby loved you, did you?” Beakley said, as though she had read his thoughts.

“Of course she loves me!” Scrooge said. “I mean, her. Of course she loves Lena! You all do!”

And then he blinked, and suddenly they were all right in front of him, all closing in on him, all forcing him backwards, the dream-Scrooge at their lead. And he knew it wasn’t real, he knew that this wasn’t even his own nightmare, but didn’t he on some level fear this very thing – them all waking up one day and deciding they were better off without him? And so he stepped backwards, once, and then again, his brain scrambling for a retort and coming up empty.

“It’s high time we sent you on your way,” Beakley said.

“Go on and crawl back into your hole,” Dewey added.

“You’re a monster,” Webby said in a voice so quiet and cruel it was almost impossible to believe it had come from her mouth. “Just like your aunt.”

“You don’t belong here,” the dream-Scrooge said, pointing his cane at him. “And you were a fool to think you could ever have a place in my family!”

The cane jabbed him right in the chest, and he stumbled back a few steps, just far enough to fall backwards out the door and onto the front stoop. The door slammed shut in front of him.

Scrooge leapt to his feet and tried the door, but it was locked.

“Open up!” he shouted, but no one replied. He reached into his pockets, searching for the key, but they were empty. He kicked at the door in frustration.

“This wouldn’t happen!” he shouted. “We would never do this to her! I promised her a place in this family, and it’s hers! As long as she wants it, it’s hers! I would never say anything like that to her, never!”

_Oh, but you _did _say that to her, _a little voice in the back of his head whispered. _Don’t you remember? When Glomgold robbed you, you told her to pack her bags…_

“I was sick!” he said aloud. “I didn’t mean it. She knows I didn’t mean it – doesn’t she?”

He put his hand on the handle of the mansion door.

This time, it opened.

* * *

“The mansion’s clear of dream larva,” Dewey reported as the kids returned to the hallway where Beakley still stood guard.

“Any new developments?” Huey asked, looking at Lena and Scrooge’s sleeping forms.

“Nothing yet,” Beakley said. “He’ll find her,” she added, as Webby knelt at Lena’s side, putting her hands around the older girl’s hand again. The friendship bracelets brushed against each other.

“Hey, Lena,” Webby whispered. “Hey. Come back to me. Please wake up!”

* * *

Upon stepping through the door, Scrooge was immediately hit by a wave of heat. His feet landed on rock that was nearly as warm. All around him the air was thick with black smoke, occasionally and briefly illuminated by flashes of pink light and punctuated by the sound of distant explosions.

Scrooge looked behind him, but the door was already gone, a boulder in its place, positioned precariously on the rocky slope. The smoke billowing from above made it difficult to see too far in any direction, but Scrooge had climbed volcanoes before. And he had a hunch of what specific volcano this might be.

He began to cross the rocks, heading up the slope and towards the ruckus. It was impossible not to be reminded of the last time he’d climbed Vesuvius, though that time the chaos had not begun until he was at the top, confronting the sorceress who lived there. This battle was already well underway. All around him the ground was cracked and cratered, making upwards progress difficult.

His foot kicked something that was not a rock, which fell over with a loose, papery thump. Scrooge bent over and picked it up. It was a book, most of its pages fallen out or hanging by threads, the words _Junior Woodchuck Guidebook_ barely legible on the cover.

“Huey?” Scrooge said, looking around. But there was no sign of the boy. No, that was incorrect – there was his red cap, a few yards ahead, a hole burnt right through the brim. And as he approached the hat, his eye fell on more items lost among the rocks – a smartphone, with its screen cracked beyond repair; a grappling hook, utterly bent out of shape; that rainbow-colored alpaca hat Dewey was so attached to, now covered in ash. They formed a trail of discarded, destroyed affects, leading down the slope to the remains of a charred, mangled airplane.

A battle had indeed taken place here. His family had been involved. And it had not gone well.

Laughter echoed from above, an unmistakably familiar cackle. Scrooge looked upwards and caught sight of a figure flying through the clouds of smoke – tall and wearing a long black dress, a magical staff held in her green-feathered hand.

He felt no surprise. Of course she would be here in this maze of nightmares. Of course Lena would fear the return of Magica de Spell.

The sorceress laughed again and pointed her staff at him, sending an enormous crackling ball of pink energy flying his way. There was no time to dodge, not safely.

But then a wave of blue light rose up from the ground, curving over him in a protective shield. The ball of energy hit the shield, and while the very rock beneath his feet shook with the impact, the shield held firm, and Scrooge himself stood there unharmed.

And right next to Scrooge, her arms held up to the sky, was Lena.

“Don’t worry, Uncle Scrooge,” she said, her eyes glowing with that same blue light as they watched the figure flying above them. “I’ve got this.”

“Lena! Bless me bagpipes, am I glad I found you. Now let’s dismiss this larval lie and head home.”

Lena didn’t even glance over at him. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “Get back to the others.”

“What? Lena, it’s time to go.”

“Where? Where could we go?”

“Back to the waking world, of course,” Scrooge said, puzzled. “You figured out all the other rooms; surely you’ve realized by now that this is all a dream. A maze of nightmares, created by Morpheus’s infernal dream larva.”

Lena let out a bitter little laugh. “What difference does that make?”

Another spell shot out from the sorceress’s staff, this one like a bolt of lightning which arched all around the blue shield, pink electricity spreading across its surface like a spider’s web.

With this jolt, the bracelet on Lena’s wrist suddenly went black and crumbled into ash, the blue shield disappearing as well. Lena gasped with shock, and then she steeled herself, clenching her fists and creating a new shield, this one pink. And though Scrooge admittedly knew little about magic – flashy tricks and cheating shortcuts had never interested him – this barrier seemed less stable than the one she’d created before.

“You should go,” Lena said. “Get out while you still can. I’ll hold her off.”

“I’m not leaving without you,” said Scrooge.

Lena shook her head. “You don’t get it. It has to be me. Don’t worry, Uncle Scrooge, I’ll keep her away from our family.”

“That’s the dream logic talking.” Scrooge put a hand on Lena’s arm, but she shoved him away.

“You don’t have to fight her alone!” Scrooge said. “And you never will. We’ve defeated Magica de Spell before, as a family, and we’ll do it again. We’ll keep you safe from your aunt.”

“You don’t get it!” Lena said again. “This isn’t about keeping me safe. I’m the only one who can keep this from happening. There’s nothing you can do here.”

Scrooge looked up again at the evil figure flying around above them.

And that was when he realized his mistake.

Scrooge McDuck knew what his greatest rival looked like. They’d been fighting each other, and glaring at each other, for decades. Though her appearance had been strange during their last showdown on Vesuvius – she’d descended so deep into her shadowy sorcery that her skin had gone green – her face had always been the same.

The face sneering down at him was also green, and it certainly had had similar features to Magica’s face. But it was not Magica de Spell’s face.

This face was older, angrier, and more decrepit than he had ever seen it. But it was still recognizably Lena’s.

“Tatter me tartans...” Scrooge breathed, looking around at the scorched landscape once more. The blast marks and craters. The discarded belongings of his family, all that was left of them after her rampage. There was even a fragment of his top hat sticking out from under a rock.

This was Lena’s greatest fear, the one she could not find the door away from: that one day she would prove herself to be a monster even worse than Magica de Spell, that one day she would turn evil and kill them all.

“Lena.” Scrooge reached out a hand towards her – the younger Lena, the real one – but she flinched away, her focus on maintaining the shield.

He tried again. “Lena, listen to me. This isn’t going to happen.”

“How could you know,” Lena said flatly.

“Because this isn’t reality,” said Scrooge. “It’s just a bad dream. That creature up there,” he pointed at the sky, “that is _not _you. You wouldn’t do this to us.”

“You don’t know that!” Lena shrieked. At that moment, the evil Lena sent another ball of energy towards them, and the entire mountain rocked with its strike, causing both Lena and Scrooge to stumble.

“How could you know?” Lena said again as they regained their footing, her back turned to Scrooge and her arms held up towards the shield. “I’ve betrayed you before, haven’t I?! And if I did this, what could you do? How could you stop me? You don’t know! How could you possibly know?”

“You’re right!” Scrooge said, throwing his hands up helplessly. “I don’t know! I don’t know what you’re going to do. I don’t know where you’re from, or what choices you’ve made before – if anything, all that I’ve seen in this miserable maze has only confirmed that I don’t know anything about you! I have _no idea _who you are.

“But I trust you.”

Lena’s shoulders twitched. An odd quietness descended upon the scene, the horrible laughter above and rumbling of the volcano below fading to near silence.

“You don’t trust me,” Lena whispered.

“I do,” said Scrooge, taking a step closer to her. “I know I said I didn’t, and I’m sorry for that. Lena, you love my family. The last thing you want is to lose us. You betrayed us, yes, when you thought you didn’t have a choice. And then you turned right around and proved yourself willing to die for Webby. That’s what I know. I know you’d rather die than let this come to pass. So that’s how I know it isn’t real. That’s how I know that it won’t happen. That’s why I trust you.”

Lena slowly lowered her arms. The pink shield faded away. The evil Lena high above them lifted her staff menacingly, but no strike followed.

Scrooge took another step towards Lena. He held out his hand to her. And now, finally, she turned towards him, and she sagged forward, burying her face in his chest.

That was a surprise, but not an unpleasant one. Scrooge put his arms around Lena. “I’ve got you, lass. I’m here. I’m here.”

Over Lena’s shoulder, he saw the evil figure slowly descend, coming to a landing further down the volcanic slope. It glared up at him – not gone, but no longer attacking.

Scrooge looked away from it.

“It’s time to wake up,” he whispered. Lena nodded, her face rubbing back and forth against the front of his jacket.

A door appeared in a nearby outcropping of rock. Lena put her hand on the doorknob and turned it.

* * *

Lena’s slow, irregular breathing was suddenly interrupted by a gasp. Her eyes fluttered open.

Webby immediately burst into tears. “Lena!” she wailed, grabbing her around the middle in a hug and burying her face into Lena’s chest.

“Be gentle, Webby,” Beakley cautioned. Just then Scrooge stirred as well, reaching up to rub his neck, stiff from sleeping upright against the wall. The dream larva fell out of his hand and to the floor, now shriveled and dead. Dewey snatched it up and stashed it in the urn anyway, just in case.

“Wha… What happened?” Lena had one arm already instinctively curled around Webby, but her brow was furrowed in confusion. “Did I hurt someone?”

“No!” Webby’s voice was a bit muffled by Lena’s sweater. “What kind of a question is that?!”

“What _do_ you remember, Lena?” Scrooge asked, being careful not to move too soon. Both of their bodies would likely be working the last dregs of the larva’s venom out of their systems for a while.

“I was in the bathroom,” Lena said. “There was this, this bug thing. And then…” She put her hand to the back of her neck.

“Dream larva,” Scrooge explained. “Brought home with us in that worthless urn. We’ve been on a bit of an illusory adventure, you and I.”

“Shame I don’t remember it,” Lena mumbled.

“You’ll remember it as a dream, if at all,” Scrooge replied, with a sigh that he kept to himself. He had expected this; when it came to dream-walking of any kind, it was much easier to remember other people’s dreams than your own. But it truly was a shame that Lena couldn’t remember the nightmares she’d faced, and how successfully she’d overcome them. But then there were no magical shortcuts to getting over trauma. Lena would just have to take the slow road like everyone else.

But he could do everything he could to make the road easier for her.

“You handled yourself very well in there,” he said. “Confronting obstacles and surmounting them with confidence. I’d say you’re more than welcome to come along on any adventure of mine, should you wish to join me and our family.”

“I’ll think about it.” Lena yawned, rubbing her eyes. “Thanks, Uncle Scrooge.”

Webby squeaked, eyes wide. Lena froze, eyes just as wide, but for completely different reasons.

“I mean Mr. – I mean –” she stammered.

“It’s alright, Lena,” Scrooge interrupted her. “You can call me whatever you want.”

It took Lena a few moments to scrounge up her usual smirk.

“How about ‘old man’?” she said.

And Scrooge tried to scowl, he really did, but somewhere along the way it turned into a grin. “Don’t push your luck,” he said.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [And You Were There](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21222140) by [lenasmagic (dimensionhoppingrose)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimensionhoppingrose/pseuds/lenasmagic)


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